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A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

element.io

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Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#231

Post by cvwright »

ensignavenger wrote: post #210
kuschku wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a market, you're always competing on cost/return. Competitors can just take the open source parts of the matrix projects without contributing code or funding back. As result, in a bid between Element and competitors, Element will lose because Element actually pays for maintaining these open source projects.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of things that folks look for when buying hosting or a support contract. For example, trust and confidence. I trust the primary maintainer of a open source project to be able to support me better than some one else maintaining a proprietary fork. In fact, the fork being proprietary means I am not going to use it when there is an open source alternative. However, I also distrust a proj…

Unfortunately most of their big customers seem to be governments, who are often bound by law to do things like select the lowest bidder.

And where criteria like “trust and confidence” are too often cover for corruption and favoritism.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#232

Post by ekidd »

taway1237 wrote: post #187
gtirloni wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL is not the issue. The CLA is. It allows the project to change licenses at will, without going back to all contributors and asking for approval.

Ah yes, CLAs are not a real open source, which is why they're required by uhh FSF. I mean I dislike CLAs personally, but I understand why they can be healthy for a project growth.

> Ah yes, CLAs are not a real open source, which is why they're required by uhh FSF.

The last time I saw a FSF CLA, it was part of a larger agreement that also imposed obligations on the FSF.

In the long run, there may be risks to the FSF holding so many copyrights. But I don't think it clarifies matters to treat the FSF's CLAs the same as ones used by a "open core" VC funded startup.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#233

Post by jeroenhd »

benatkin wrote: post #128
exabrial wrote: post #64

I do appreciate _not_ using some home made license, thank you. Personally though, I find the AGPL too restrictive for projects. The [OSI Certified] EUPL I think is perfect: * If you don't modify the code: Behaves like the ASL2.0 * If you do modify the code: * Behaves like the LGPL in that your private codebase remains private, but changes to the library must be submitted back during a 'distribution' event * Behaves l…

This web page tells me they really don't want you to read the license. https://commission.europa.eu/content/european-union-public-l... You have to go to a list of languages, and then once you find English on the list it gives you a PDF or text, no HTML version. I read it, and I think the exception allowing for compatibility with the MPL would allow me to pretty much do what I want with a larger work, as long as I rel…

I, for one, am glad that licenses exist that aren't written in English exclusively.

Most of the world aren't native English speakers and most native English speakers live in a particularly British-derived system of law. Most open source licenses are full of assumptions that the legal system they're implied in are either modeled after the American system or derived from Common Law. Translations exist, but they're not more than that.

The EUPL was explicitly designed to comply with EU trademark and copyright law, which differs from American copyright law in various ways. It also fixed the "you can read the license in your own language but if you want to use those freedoms you'd better learn English because that's the version that counts" problem.

One big limitation to the EUPL is that it only covers European languages (as it was designed for the EU).

I can't say I feel too bad about needing to pick the English license from an alphabetically sorted list. There aren't any officially valid translations of AGPL, nor for Apache, nor for MIT. I don't think many programmers will run into problems using English, as programming is often very English oriented, but for the common people, that's different. A rural farmer with little to no access to higher education should know that he has the right to change the software on the embedded equipment he bought, even if he doesn't speak a word of English. He won't be altering the software, but perhaps he knows someone who could, and knowledge about possibilities can be the start of change.

After all, what freedoms does free software provide if it's only free to the minority of English readers?

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#235

Post by lannisterstark »

cvwright wrote: post #230
lannisterstark wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used element every day for a while now, it's fantastic software... The trouble is that I want to believe you, but I'm(and I imagine certain others) having a hard time doing so.

Element has been giving us open source code under the most liberal license for something like 10 years. I think he’s earned a little benefit of the doubt.

Well, sure, but so did Hashicorp with terraform for 9 years. Rather successfully mind you. Things and circumstances change.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#236

Post by lannisterstark »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #191

AGPL, on the spectrum of “I’m allowed to do whatever I want” to “they heavily restrict what I can do” sits firmly on the right side, alongside patents and other forms of heavy handed government intervention. It sucks how free as in freedom came to mean freedom to make rules about others.

>free as in freedom came to mean freedom to make rules about others.

Sadly that usually ends up being the end result.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#237

Post by lannisterstark »

bzmrgonz wrote: post #79
nerdponx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the death? I definitely felt like something was wrong, given that the protocol seems to have lots of problems and Dendrite has been in 0.x beta since basically forever. But I don't know what this means practically for Matrix.

Too many people riding their coat-tails and not paying royalties for the hard-work they did and continue to do. I think they should go the CE & paid versioning that other projects have chosen. Let people continue to experiment with CE and once they are in a corporation, "we" can steer our bosses to the paid version. Alternatively, they should move up the stack and offer a clean deployment/hosting option (remove the c…

>not paying royalties

It's an open source project. What royalties?

>continue to do

and are 100% allowed to.

> I think they should go the CE & paid versioning that other projects have chosen.

I don't think that'd be the best idea, it works for other projects because they're not essentially acting as defacto communication protocols.

Re: A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

#239

Post by saagarjha »

cxr wrote: post #215
saagarjha wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim, if I understand it correctly, is that selling an alternate license is OK because you're not doing anything unethical directly; after all, you're offering your version with the code. If they don't provide their source, they're the ones being unethical, not you. I don't think this actually works, because if you look at the reason GPL exists in the first place, it's to prevent precisely this kind of move. It…

My claim is that my characterization of how Stallman thinks about this is an accurate characterization of how he thinks about this. > It is "immoral" to release your code under a permissive license That doesn't jibe with the FSF philosophy at all. I get the feeling that I'm interacting with someone who "knows" more about the FSF and Stallman based on what they've heard or imagined rather than actually reading what ei…

I called Stallman's point a cop out, so I quite frankly do not care very much about his position here, because I think it explicitly goes against what he espouses elsewhere.
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